magic merkers/four twenty smirkers

delayed

I wake up. The girl lying next to me is not the one that was there when I fell asleep. This is not to hint at a prolific pace of sexual activity but more to hint at the nature of the weekend, an inflow of girls/guys/substance and an outflow of overflowing ashtrays/empties. Yeah, I’m twenty and we still wait for the parents to leave.

The girl and I rehash the previous nights occurrences; the hook ups, the blowups, the cleanups. She mentions she has some passes to the Vancouver incarnation of the Virgin Festival. I mention I have a car.

We’re driving now, her in the front seat and her friend in the back. Her is Julian and her friend is Elisa. Conversing with these two sober is new but enjoyable. I’m tired from the weekend’s exploits and am trying not to think about digging holes in less than 20 hours.

Julian’s younger than me and she’s taking charge like I never could at her age. Apparently we are supposed to be on some sort of guest list, there’s a mix up though. Cell phones pressed to ears, stressed stammers and then a golf cart appears. Mix up two: more phones and the golf cart again. Mix up three: a gap toothed outsourced rent a cop playing by the book and more phones. Golf cart again. Golf cart is frustrated but takes us in.

We realize that Julian’s persistent shot calling may have inadvertently garnered us more wristband privileges than we were supposed to have. I know “Future Shop presents the V Festival Louder Lounge” is going to be as lame as it sounds but I’m curious. Laughing at the suckers qued up for the beer garden- oh wait, jokes on me, the Budweiser still costs six bucks. And I have to bear the obscene antics of some wrap around shade wearing bartender named “jayman”. He looks and acts like he has probably attempted to start his own reality porn site on more than one occasion.

The Louder Lounge has two upsides; free mash potatoes and a grassy knoll on which to sit and view the social experiment that is the Virgin Festival. Everyone is here: legions of lost souls who can’t get a seat in the cafeteria for AFI, Granville street frequenters at the Bacardi B-Live tent, local scensters for You Say Party! We Say Die!, Kappa Sigma boys for the chicks and everyone in between for the Killers.

We’ve arrived late in the day, AFI is just starting and the Killers headline next. I’m not too moved by bad haircuts or canned strings so I busy myself with people watching. I spot a group of teens whose parents should probably watch this and tune in. “OMG Chris u r so NOT EMO” is the first thing I hear. Some kid volunteered to have girls apply eyeliner on him. Pussy. If he wanted more emo points he would’ve totally let them cut him.

The Killers play a set that seemed practiced to tee. They’ve got a new album, which means they no longer have to rely on an awkward intermission and a shitty “Moonage Daydream” cover like the last time I saw them. It’s a pretty great set though, hitting all the right new wave riff highs and melodramatic lows. Brandon Flowers and his Wizard of Oz ruby red slippers are pushing the Americana thing a bit too much. It’s one of Elisa and Julians first concerts and they seem to be having a blast. The show ends predictably with an “All These Things That I’ve Done” sing a long.

Driving home through the endowment lands the lights from West 4th pave a path into night’s abyss and I realize that I complain way too much for someone so lucky. Whoa, real introspective.

castaways

Pirates shit off the pirate ship, and lush's puke anywhere they stand. We stood, landlubbers, two feet on solid ground, on little islands. Very close to our two neighbourhoods, united in more then just the campsite and fire and booze we shared. More then just hobbies we had in common. The labels and characters in the crowd were strikingly similar from one side of the city to another. Our upscale avenue compared with their first-draft grid patterned parking lot neighbourhood; same. Young, dumb, and full of cum.

We know better, but they don't care.

Hey. I went away I came back. They call it fly over country for a reason, but I’ve forgotten what that reason is.

We’ve been drinking again. Hot Clique in crowd raging away at local party, three nights in a row. The host who boasts the most roast. That’s Morgan; he’s something else.

In other news, if you’ve been bitten by me in the last six months, please feel free to bite me back. Why the fuck does no one bite back? There is something vampiric about biting, and that I only do it at night, under the nightshade of much booze. Girls, women, I want to taste you, not literally eat you, and I haven’t had any action in a while, so I get at flesh like gangrene. Whoa hey.

Stee-Shirt night. Theme party: in my white tee, jiffy in hand. Tag tag tag your it, smash shit. Catch-phrase of the minute slap-dashed onto your billboard belly and I’m high from the fumes. The slogans pop into the writers mind quick and leave even faster; less brain cells holding on. Some of my attire from the art-night have been affixed to this slop.

Fuck list:
Blogs, thizz, E, rap, death, long cuticles, snot, hippers, hipsters, rappers, stink socks, E, boppers, zarffing, the birds laughing at you as the sun rises, jeans that fit too well, young hips, young skin, permanent ink, small dink, not setting your alarm, barfing, charfing, Fort McMurray, airports, dead presidents…

Shit:
Thinking about your buddies’ girlfriends. She sure is pretty, maybe. He’s your friend, for sure. I weigh the options; pros versus cons. Seventy percent of the time I wouldn’t fuck them because it’d ruin a good thing. Thirty percent ain’t half bad! I think I’ll be fucking myself for a while.

hype, swedes, jager

“Hey what are you doing tonight man?” my phone said. Actually it was my friend asking me this via the entity of my phone.
“Going to a show tonight” I spoke back to him, into the entity.
“Who are you seeing?”
“Peter Bjorn and John”, a loaded statement, yeah I know whats gonna come next.
“Who are they again?”, the entity poses another question, demands another answer. This is where I sigh, realizing what I have to say to make this band relevant.
“You know that whistle song?”
“Oh yeah, shits kinda played”. He’s right. The song is played. I like to think I had a hand in allowing that song reach similar status as a staple of every house party in my local suburb just like “What You Know” was last year.

The Commodore is sold out and I feel like I’m seeing a band who has had a song in an iPod commercial. There’s unnecessary tension. Imagine if they didn’t play “Young Folks”. That’d be like having sex and not busting a nut. I’m thinking fucking analogies and hoping that the frat boys I spotted won’t be too pissed when they discover that Victoria Bergsman isn’t part of the band.

Writers Block is a good pop album with a bunch of songs unfortunately marred by the ubiquity of “Young Folks”. On it there are the usual amounts of melodic emotional bliss and carefully instrumented emotional loss found on any good indie pop album. Then again some indie pop albums can be a bit boring. Peter Bjorn and Johns performance mirrored their album, all the appropriate swells and charm but still sort of boring.

Then they played it. People perked up but didn’t go as bonkers as I thought they would. The song sans female really lacks the chemistry that makes it so appealing to the ears. Or maybe the song is played to them too.

Fujiya & Miyagi opened with hushed electro pop of terrestrial heights. They sounded repetitive and boring a few songs before finishing up but I’ll leave you with this repetitive but not boring Michel Gondry directed video for “Ankle Injuries”.

modern way

I could get rampantly dystopian right now. I won’t.

I will suggest that everyone should consider this.

Then go to your Facebook (I’m sure you have it in the bookmarks toolbar) and click “Networks”. On the right hit network statistics and see what you, the key demographic, the consumer are in to.

I belong to both the Vancouver and SFU networks. As such I, along with hordes of marketing firms willing to pay top dollar, am privy to some of the information Facebook collects. Here are some observations:

Everyone loves Fight Club.

SFU students are interested in travel, traveling and travelling.

Stereotypical college kids. Modest Mouse and Garden State are listed.

Everyone loves Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code.

Earth shattering? Hardly. But remember kids, big brother is watching!

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh